NWCILegacyProject

Curated by Project Curator Valerie Connor the work is now on permanent loan to Limerick City Gallery. LEGACY PROJECT
We who desire it work for it, our own eyes should behold it. Alice Milligan, Activist, 1896

The National Women's Council of Ireland initiated the Legacy Project in 2012 with the aim of making an exhibition and publication that would to challenge clichéd mainstream representations o

f women and work.The exhibition titled STILL, WE WORK and its accompanying publication, is the result of this process. The exhibition features specially commissioned artworks by Miriam O'Connor, Sarah Browne, Vagabond Reviews and Anne Tallentire. Valerie Connor was appointed project curator in 2012 and the artists were formally announced at the HYPERLINK "http://www.siptu.ie/services/equality/conference/"One Struggle Conference organised by SIPTU Equality at Liberty Hall on 9 March 2013, where they gave the audience an overview of how they work. The effects of economic austerity policies have inevitably affected the outlook and context: the multiple impacts on women of simultaneous cut-backs by government departments, reductions in services, and changed practices concerning paid and unpaid work has been the subject of attention for advocacy groups in this and other countries. The Legacy Project brief was re-configured to reflect a more inquiring and critical approach to thinking about the complexity of representations of women and work. The original proposal to the Atlantic Philanthropies pointed out the unique role photography plays in society and culture in creating and breaking the status quo. The core strength of photography as a representational medium for the Legacy Project is that it is easily reproducible and can travel quickly, while at the same time carrying great symbolic value and 'mythical force' as a culturally significant medium. The commissions include writing and texts by the artists and invited collaborators. The production of new readings or the reformulation of photographs already in circulation, or in collections, is of just as much of interest as the production of new images. Broken Biscuits

Over the course of the Legacy Project the artists sought out and created connections and links among the various constituencies around the commissioning organisation, seeking out the communities of interest across members. The NWCI Legacy Project recognises and celebrates women's work and women’s activism in challenging conventional thinking about work in modern times up to today and how this is represented. These commissions aim to contribute to public dialogue about this and amplify the advocacy work of the NWCI, engaging with the membership, interested communities and individuals. They are equally about the contribution artists make to our knowledge of the world. Many of the conversations about the NWCI Legacy Project were conducted explicitly with reference to the anniversary year of the 1913 Dublin Lockout and the struggle to 'own' it and control its complexity. The family owned Jacob's biscuit factory moved to lock out workers for wearing badges that announced their union membership in August 1913. Accounts of the appearance of the badges on the apparel of women working at factory suggest this display was especially offensive. Regarding the immediate legacy for ordinary women, most of the women, who were locked out, never got their jobs back. Jacob's management were already not beyond engaging in 'black-listing' workers given poor reputations by previous employers. Troublesome 'girls' among them. Yet the factory owners were seen by many, and saw themselves, as progressive employers, albeit in a paternalistic fashion, for driving innovations in their provision of health services, use of modern decor and colour to create a happy workplace, and in the inclusion of learning and recreational spaces in and around the factory. Fast forward, by mid-20th century, the Jacob's brand's relationship with women workers and consumers takes us into a corporate culture of light entertainment and television awards, the sponsoring of RTE agony aunt Dear Frankie, and news reports of women in the Tallaght factory in 1985 making and packing sending hi-nutrition biscuits to Ethiopia as part of the famine relief effort associated with Live Aid. A decade later, one influential chairman of the company becomes the founder donor to the Irish Museum of Modern Art collection. Fast forward again, the Tallaght factory closes in 2009, and the brand becomes part of a global financial brand portfolio with sister brands associated with industrial disputes and worker sit-ins in Ireland as the economic crisis bites. Several member organisations of the NWCI have experience in commissioning artists and art organisations to work on projects with them about issues connected with their work. In the case of the NWCI itself, in 2002, photographer Derek Spiers was commissioned by the NWCI for the project 'Putting Women in the Picture', which focussed on the low number of women TDs in the house of the Oireachtas. In 2011, for 100 years of International Women’s Day, the National Women’s Council of Ireland invited women working in the cultural sector, academia, and politics to speak to an audience about their personal responses to images and texts featured on a series of postcards produced by the NWCI. The event was held on the occasion of the Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland, curated by Dr. Catherine Morris, Milligan’s biographer. Speakers at this centenary event included contributors Trish Lambe, Project Curator, Gallery of Photography; Ivana Bacik, Senator, Dail Eireann; Jane Ohlmeyer, Vice Provost, TCD; Margaret MacCurtain, Historian; Alice Maher, Artist; and Lynn Parker, Producer, Rough Magic Theatre Company. One of the postcards reproduced an allegorical drawing of Erin in Chains from the Weekly Freeman, 1881, juxtaposed with a quote from cultural and political activist, Alice Milligan, 1896: “Freedom is as yet a far off thing; yet must we who desire it work for it as ardently and as joyously as if we had good hope that our own eyes should behold it.”

Commissioned by NWCI and Valerie Connor, Legacy Project Curator and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies.